Which distro for Nvidia GeForce 8500 GT?

I wish to use it for simple office and internet tasks, I also do some little python code.
Trying ubuntu from a wubi installation I felt that my system was not working so fast and reliable, and I want some advice before choosing the distro, i don't know if a gnome desktop is better than unity for my hardware.

Re: Choosing what I need

Hi antoelca and welcome!

Yours is a very good system, more than capable of running Ubuntu. WUBI should not slow it down, but most of us have never installed that way, so when it comes to issues that touch upon file structures, it may be out of our depth.

Like Vakman my first suspicion is that you are using the standard open-source video drivers, and this may be the issue. To help us pin things down further, please expand on what you mean by "...my system was not working so fast and reliable"? Please provide every detail you can think of. Also, post back to this thread the results of:

Code:

lspci -vk | grep -iA13 vga

With respect to choosing distros, your computer is good enough to run any distro you want. However, the choice of distro is a difficult matter to advise you on because it is mainly a matter of personal preference. Since you have sufficiently robust hardware to run any distro, why don't you try them out as LiveDVD/USB before installing the one you like? In the Ubuntu universe there are already four flavours that you can try: Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Lubuntu. It's a simple matter to try them all out, for the cost of four DVDs.

Newb: How far must I jump to clear the ledge halfway down?
Guru: It's bad to jump off cliffs. Let's look at better options.
Newb: Stop harping about "best practices" and just let me jump.

Re: Choosing what I need

Hi Vakman and DuckHook. Thanks for your advice. Sorry about writing so late.
I did what you said to try the Live versions, a friend helped me building the bootable USB. And we had some creative discussion.
I choose lubuntu. My parents have to use this computer now that XP is an undead danger ( xD ) and the Unity way of life is not in their mood.

About the "performance" and lazy description i gave to you: first time I used ubuntu with the unity desktop I saw that swapping between web browser and the spreadsheet I was working had some lag and the fan noise in the CPU was more often loud than I could remember it had to be.